


One Art

by landofspices



Series: Only Our Dark Does Lighten: canon-based episode tags [3]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Coercion, Episode Tag, M/M, Sadism, Sexual Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 22:39:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6773152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landofspices/pseuds/landofspices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for "Child Hood". The only person to whom Guy can turn for comfort is Vaisey. </p><p>[tw: current abusive relationship, and alludes to a history of profoundly coercive abuse, including references to underage (by modern standards) sex.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Art

**Author's Note:**

> Dropping in unexpectedly! I'm still away on my trip sans laptop, hence why I'm not able to be on tumblr or follow fic updates; returning soon, though. :D But I've been writing this for bae in my free moments, as a thank you for her amazing support. 
> 
> She challenged me to write Vaisey POV ... so the blame is to be shared!

_The art of losing isn’t hard to master;_  
_so many things seem filled with the intent_  
_to be lost that their loss is no disaster._

— Elizabeth Bishop

 

He holds Guy's chin between his fingers. The skin is wet and cold: a vein thrums under it, beating against him as the pulse of an animal skitters into death. Marian's shoulder blades arch as she walks away without looking back. He has not taken so long as this to find the tender place in her heart. A heart which needs no scrying, shallow as a stream dried into foulness by summer heat. Only he has waited to dig at it, that tenderness, to give the ache she has long deserved. Edward of Knighton is dull, that's the truth of the matter, be he alive or be he dead. 

He presses his fingers and thumb hard into Guy's cheeks, marking the bruises, the downcast eyes. Locksley likes roughhousing. If Marian had stayed to take Guy to task for his ingratitude, she'd have had a pretty sight. Set the boy a-weeping, a-weeping, a-weeping. He feels the warmth of a tear marking his hand.

Not a bad time for a lesson. With his other hand, he holds back the wet, clinging hair from Guy's ear and puts his mouth to it. "Take away my favour," he murmurs, "And you haven't any life to live. Don't forget it, Guy, now, will you?"

He feels the heat of blood rising in Guy's face, and the wet, singular heat of tears, one by one. This face he holds. He remembers slapping it with his open hand, when reproof was needed daily, sometimes hourly. It's an art, to manage that and keep a child lovely, useful, loyal. He strokes Guy's cheek, and Guy swallows hard and loud.

You try not to weep, he thinks. But what a mistake: for you see, I decide if you shall weep or not. But I find that I prefer it done in my chamber. He smiles and circles Guy's wrist with his fingers. Come along, my boy, my bird. Inside with you.

*

Guy kneels in a posture of abnegation. It's a distraction, to see his throat tremble. The thing to do is this: punish when you wish it, don't trouble about why. Offer what is called affection, what is called love, at strange intervals.

He touches Guy's lowered eyelids, the long wet lashes stilled on his cheeks. As if there is still a curiosity here, a thing unstudied. And there's a truth to that, else why not use the boy simply to administer his accounts and order his banquets, put quiet knives in the backs of nobles who gabble when they ought not?

Guy does not turn his coat, does not drain a private ration of silver: little Guy, who came to him all soft-eyed, uncertain, fearful. A useful man to keep about the place.

Oh, it is not a sensical thing. Guy is no match for him in wits, and he's never lost his heart to any beauty: he will not lose it to Guy's. Wiser to think he has no heart, as they chirp in the marketplace. Beauty, that thing to keep while it amuses. Guy should have grown dull on his palate, but he has not, he has not. The birds are piping their dainty, famished songs. He takes Guy's wet hair into his fingers, into his palms. With a linen cloth, he enfolds it, piece by piece. With my very goods, I soak up their peasant water. I take up your shame, your cries.

Touching the shivering body is more than enough. He does not even need those pursed, wet lips to gape and struggle around his prick.

"You believed me, didn't you, Guy?" He drops the cloth, sodden now. He cups Guy's face between his palms. "Your faith in me. It faltered, and you thought I'd let Hood take you from me."

Tears strike his hands: raindrops, hot and sweet. A sob like sickness breaks from Guy's mouth and the blue eyes flicker up, greedy, full of wishing.

*

He presses the cherry to Guy's lips. Thus can I be tender, and offer what is called affection. The lips open to him. He gentles the cheekbone, the jaw, while Guy chews. Every man is bone, and why the Gisborne bones should be disposed so pleasingly is one of the mysteries, be it divine or diabolic. But he inclines to the fiendish side of the argument. Guy has taken to it, that can't be denied, has taken to all things ungodly. 

Too long since Guy knelt like this, nibbling from his hand. It is like the old days. No food but what I give you. No wine unless I hold the cup to your lips. A game they still play at table, alone: Locksley's master, who may not lift his own cup, this night. Who may not cut his own meat. It is best at Locksley, where Guy believes the servants watch him all the time for indications of depravity.

"Hold the stone between your teeth," he says. It is lovelier, Guy crouched like a young angel: as it was better when they did it all the time, and not for sport. He opens Guy's mouth, plucks the bared cherry-stone from where it is held, like a rough jewel, between his teeth, and throws it carelessly away into the bird chamber's shadows.

He takes another cherry from the dish and holds it to Guy's bitten, childish lips. The mouth opens and he jerks it away. This game is the oldest in the world, is it not? I pretend to give. I do not give.

The art of taking isn't hard to master. It's giving that requires the finesse. He remembers Guy's body swaying, faint with lack of food, against him. The slender warmth of you, and the black hair falling across your face. Your limbs folding softly into mine and your face touching my neck in an unmeant kiss.

All of this, my work. Your meat from my fingers. Your wine when I desire to slake you. The garde-robe by my permission. Sleep when I allow it, otherwise awake at my side, little cup-bearer. My Ganymede, with your dark unruly locks. Every breath in your body, every heartbeat: every sip from a goblet, from a prick's bud, it was all for my possessing. I might even be said to have kept you alive. All who know me would think that I meant: I did not kill you, did not have you killed. Only I mean something more artful, more reminiscent of love. How I balanced your humours like a physician caring for a crown prince, how I never brought you near death: only taught you loyalty, made you so sharp, and so sweet.

You'd press close to me in the carriage, put your head on my shoulder, whisper to me in the half-dark of your parents. How you missed them, the leper and the whore.

He takes the second cherry-stone between his fingers. It is bare of flesh.

"Toute peine mérite salaire," he says.

*

This is a merry pastime. Guy's head in his lap. Eyes swollen with weeping and lips stained by the cherries. How you are ravished over and over, he thinks. I am a secret witch, unsuspected by anyone: doing all this to you without the need of applying my prick to your delicate places.

"If you think I'd let Hood have you, you're a fool," he says. Some while ago, as he fed him upon cherries, he found himself kissing Guy's hair. It was damp, soft, elusive. "I don't like waste, I'm a thrifty man. I've been called parsimonious, would you believe that."

In those days, he administered correction for all Guy's faults. Not as he would have a prisoner flogged: the rod or his hand would serve for a boy he wished to keep whole, to keep beautiful. You shall be a knight when you are knightly. That was their shibboleth, and idly he murmurs it now. "You shall be a knight," he whispers, "When you are knightly."

Guy's body goes still, and even his breath seems to stopper itself inside him. He doesn't move, doesn't try to rise.

He beat Guy for an ugly stroke in swordplay or a false note on the lute he was meant to play so prettily. For being late; for neglecting the care of his weapons; for turning sick at the sight of his own blood like a maiden. For unwarrantable melancholy. For falling from his horse, for lying, for pissing his bed, for spending too long at prayer. There are better things you can practise if you like being on your knees, he said.

He beat Guy for stealing food and wine. For vanity. For his lamentable failure to suck dry his lord's prick without retching. For his dalliance with Jeanne, the kitchen girl with the silvery hair, who looked upon him kindly. Bring me the pox, he said – holding the boy in his lap before he beat him, like Ganymede indeed – and I'll make of you a eunuch, a blue-eyed eunuch to bear my cup for the rest of your days, until I tire of you.

He says, "You let me down."

Guy's chest heaves in a breath, and he says, "I'm sorry, my lord. Forgive me. Please. Forgive me."

**Author's Note:**

> In our headcanon, Guy is about sixteen and a half when he enters Vaisey's service (12-ish at the time of the fire; 28 at the opening of the show), and the period of intense coercive conditioning described here is during their first years together. Guy never lives apart from Vaisey until he is granted the management of Locksley.


End file.
